As of Friday, engineers said the dam was discharging 80,000 cubic feet of water per second, and 78,900 on Saturday. Meanwhile at the other end of the lake, only 46,000 cfs are coming in from upstream on the Cumberland River.
That compares to last week, when 165,000 feet per second were pouring over the spillways at Barkley Dam, or more than 1.5 million gallons per second.
More reductions in outflow will be made again on Sunday to a forecast of 70,000 cfs. Engineers also noted that 87 percent of Lake Barkley's capacity to retain flood waters is still available.
It won't be needed in the near future. The Cumberland River at Clarksville has receded below action stage of 40 feet to 36.5 as of Friday, with a forecast to fall to 34 feet by Monday morning.
At Kentucky Dam, outflow has been steady all week at more than 230,000 cubic feet per second. That's forecast to slow to 215,000 by Sunday morning, 201,000 Monday morning, and 189,000 Tuesday.
Neither dam approached its record for discharges last week. Kentucky Dam discharged more than 446,000 cfs in 1944, and Barkley Dam released 303,000 cfs in May of 2011.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
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Barkley and Kentucky Lake forecasts
